The first Internet was a communications system funded and built by researchers for military use. This Internet, originally known as ARPANET, was embraced by the research and academic communities as a mechanism for scientists to share and collaborate with other scientists. This collaborative network quickly evolved into the information superhighway of commerce and communication. The Internet explosion was due, in part, to the development of the World Wide Web (WWW) and graphically-based Web browsers, which facilitated a more graphically-oriented, multimedia system that uses the infrastructure of the Internet to provide information in a graphical, visual, and interactive manner that appeals to a wider audience of consumers seeking instant gratification.
As the technology underlying transmission bandwidth has grown in conjunction with the accessibility to such increasing transmission bandwidth, a new paradigm for the old idea of Internet collaboration is emerging that takes advantage of the modern graphical, visual world. This new paradigm is also driven by the advance in real-time or time-sensitive data transmission technology, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, and the like. Non-Internet videoconferencing, which has generally never been able to completely supplant teleconferencing as a viable means for reliable communications, is slowly fading away in favor of Internet-driven technology, such as collaborative electronic meetings. Services, such as WEBEX COMMUNICATIONS, INC.'S, WEBEX™ electronic meeting or collaboration services offer the ability for users to connect, at least initially, across the Internet to share voice, video, and data in real time for meetings, presentations, training, or the like.
In such collaborative meeting environments, a virtual meeting room typically is made up of several meeting objects which are generally containers for presentation information, such as slides, video, audio, documents, computer applications, and the like, that are themselves contained within the container of the meeting room. These meeting objects are typically placed into a static arrangement on the actual electronic meeting interface. Therefore, chat objects may be set on the bottom right of each meeting interface screen, while slide or other main presentation objects are set on the left half of each meeting interface screen. Meeting presenters usually enter the electronic meeting room shortly before the meeting to prepare the various objects with data, such as slides, animation, data, or the like. Once the meeting begins, each of the meeting participants, both presenters and viewers, see the same static meeting interface with the presenters information loaded thereon.
In some versions of current electronic meeting applications, a presenter may be able to layer different presentation or meeting objects that may be uncovered or hidden by selecting tabs. However, from meeting to meeting, the arrangement of the various meeting objects will be the same or similar with all meeting participants viewing the same meeting set up. The presenter will typically not be able to add anything to an ongoing meeting except through a live screen share or other such facility. Moreover, in a large meeting where there may be multiple presenters, if one presenter needs to communicate with another, the existing meeting interface would need a chat object that allows a user to select the individual participants in order to effect that communication. If no chat object existed, it would be more complicated for one presenter to communicate with another.